Tides: the overwhelming factor in Top End barra fishing

Tides are the overwhelming factor in Top End barra fishing. Wind and water clarity come next. The finer bite periods around moonrise, moonset and the moon overhead or underfoot matter too, but for us — with tides as big as ours — they come third. In places with small tides, those moon periods can be the main event. Up here, the tide usually is.

Big tides, small tides

Each has its place, and each system behaves differently on them.

• Big spring tides are great for harbour fishing, and in the runoff they get the coastal creeks and the creeks off the big rivers firing.
• Small neap tides bring the water clarity for sight casting on the flats and trolling the mouths of the big rivers in the runoff. Towards the end of the runoff they are the tides for rock bars in the big rivers, and for the big barra pushing up to the top of the fresh at Shady Camp.

The same tide that is painful in one place can be red-hot in another. Neaps on the Daly early in the runoff can be slow — the water level barely changes, there is no urgency, and the fish can feed on little rainbowfish along the edge all day. On the same tides, the Finniss or Shady Camp can be a totally different story.

The back of the moon

The pattern is set in stone. On the back of the moon — the few days after the full and new moons — the high tides fall in the morning. As the days go on the high gets later, until it is in the middle of the day and you are approaching the three-tide day in the neaps. Once you know what the moon is doing, you know roughly what the tides are doing without looking.

The back of the moon is our favourite time to fish, for a few reasons:

• The tides are big, so the lows are low.
• You have high-tide spots in the morning — isolated rocks, isolated mangrove clumps, beaches — then a fast run-out through the middle of the day.
• In the runoff, the biggest tides push the big fish right up into the coastal creeks and floodplains. That is when the big-fish sessions happen.

High tide in the morning also tends to mean a high tide out of the wind, before the afternoon breeze gets up.

The rule of twelfths

Across a roughly six-hour tide, the movement is not even. The first two hours are slow, the middle two hours carry about half the total movement, and the last two hours slow down again.

That gives you a rhythm. The first part of the tide is your time to assess. By the middle, you want to know where the fish are and be on them — because that is when things move fast and you may need to race ahead.

Fast water and slow water

Which part of the tide fishes best depends on what you are doing.

• For harbour drains you are hoping will empty out, the fast part of the run-out is what you want.
• For sight casting on the flats, you want the slow part of the tide, when the water is clearer.
• On the big rivers, a big incoming tide rushing in is a hectic bite time. Then, as it slows, stops and hovers for a few minutes before turning, the bait gets nervous again and the fish switch back on.

Following the tide

On a long river, leapfrogging ahead of the tide works. When the bite switches off, go — straight away. If you wait another ten minutes, you will miss it at the next spot up and fall further behind. If you are thinking you should move, you probably should have moved ten minutes ago.

It works in smaller systems too. In a harbour creek you may only get a couple of jumps — the first bite out at the main junction, the next at the next choke point up — before the tide is running too hard to bother. Two jumps in a small system is a good result.

Planning a day around one tide

A harbour creek system can be fished through an entire tide if you plan it from the chart:

• On the top of the tide, start on the high-tide spots — isolated mangrove clumps, rocky points, beaches, transition areas, the edges of little channels.
• As it starts to fall, move to the flats and to the rocky points and drains that throw early colour changes.
• Through the fast part of the run-out, find a big drain that empties properly and fish it hard.
• Over the low, it can go quiet, but rubbly and gravel patches can still produce.
• On the turn, set up for the first push of the incoming, then chase the fish back up into the early-draining creeks.

Know which way the wind will blow each spot out, and have somewhere sheltered in mind for each direction.

Get good charts

Spend as much as you can afford on good charts. A chart with a satellite overlay shows you which flats drain early and which drain late, which banks drop steeply into deep water, which creeks are backed by big floodplains, and which ones will strand you if you misjudge the tide.

Every tide chart gives slightly different times and heights. Pick one or two you trust and learn how they relate to the areas you fish. For detailed spot-to-spot planning on the water, rely on the tides on your sounder — and be aware that the app on your phone and the chart card in your sounder may not agree.

The dry season shift

Through the middle of the dry season, the lowest low of the day falls at night, and the daytime lows may not drop far at all. That is why people say barra do not bite in the dry. Often the tides simply are not running out far enough during the day to get them working.

So change where you fish. Look for steeper banks with drains that empty without needing a really low tide, and plan your sight casting and fly trips for the clean water. As the year turns towards the build-up, the lowest lows swing back into the daytime and the drains start emptying again.

In the fresh

Tide still matters even where the water level barely moves. When big tides start surging over a barrage, barra on the fresh side know about it and head towards the inflow. In the billabongs, moonrise, moonset and the moon overhead are worth keeping in mind.